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Friday, November 23, 2012

Black Friday Blog Hop & TE Studio Challenge

HI Everyone,

Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I am so thankful for all things big and small, family and friends and to be part of the wonderful global crafting family! As today is the start of Black Friday - we are going to celebrate that with the Baker's Dozen Studio Challenge and a BIG Black Friday Sale at Taylored Expressions!

Today, Taylor will be releasing a brand new set of Stacklets: Labels Stacklets 3 - which coordinates with the Frame it Up 1 die - so when you are shopping today - you get to buy these dies as part of the sale!! Woohoo!!!

Each month, the Taylored Expressions design team has a Studio Challenge where we answer a question and create a project based on a challenge. So the challenge question for November is:

As crafters, we often talk about a hand-crafted Christmas. How much stamping do you do for the holidays? Do you mail hand-stamped cards, make gift packaging, tags, handmade gifts? Or do you stamp year-round, but not so much for Christmas? Please show us some handmade tags and share a tip or two on how to keep stamping fun for the holidays.

How much stamping do you do for the holidays?

Well for me, the holiday season starts right around the time I have to make costumes for Halloween! And then we celebrate Diwali (the Indian Festival of Lights) which is a super busy time around the same time as Thanksgiving, and then after that comes so many family birthdays in the month of December and teacher appreciation gifts for the holidays and then traveling to go see family for Christmas - it is a super crazy busy time - so the answer is - I stamp as much as I can - but it never seems to be enough!!! LOL! I must need to figure out a way to make the days last longer!

My favorite is to make handmade gifts - I love making special things for family and friends and then wrap them with handmade tags. There are a few friends that I send their handmade tags, presents and cards in the mail (always cutting it close at the post office!!).

Do you stamp year-round but not so much for Christmas?

I used to stamp year round for Christmas - but as the kids have grown up it hasn't been easy to keep a regular stamping schedule... but I love my stamp therapy and hope to stamp for Christmas year round this year! :)

Tips for stamping during/for the holidays:

Ha! I am not much of a tip person - but here are a few things that work for me:

Making lists always helps - I have categories of kids, teachers, family and friends and that helps in figuring out how many tags/cards I need to make - which makes mass producing them way easier. I can try to do all the kids stuff in one day and the same for teachers and friends. The family ones take a bit longer for personalizing each one

Coming up with a layout, figuring out your papers ahead of time - this is always why it takes me 4 hours to make a card - because I am constantly trying to figure what I want to do and what supplies I need. Once the layout is decided - then its easy to start mass producing -

Tupperware containers :) - I keep a box or two of tupperware containers by my craft area - anything that I finish goes right in the box - otherwise what usually happens is that it gets lost somewhere on my craft desk :) I have another longer container ( 8x11 size) for projects that aren't finished yet - so that all the little pieces of a project don't get lost. The tags below were made over 3 days - one day was die cutting the labels, the next in the snowflake die cutting and assembly, and the last in putting together and stamping. After each step, I just put it in my container and take it out the next day - so that my craft desk doesn't swallow my projects :)

I would love to hear your tips for stamping during the holidays! Please let me know what works for you - I am always on the lookout for ideas and helpful hints!

Let It Snow Tags:

For today's studio challenge, I made a set of tags using the newest stacklets: Labels Stacklets 3 and the awesome set of snowflake dies: Make a Snowflake (which die cuts: 6 different dies) with the stamp set: the Cool Crowd. Here are what the tags looked like:

I started by die cutting the largest of the stacklets in white and embossed it with some large dots - and then layering the stacklets with the Frame It Up 1. One tip when using the Make a Snowflake die set is to run all the dies at once (not to separate them into individual dies) - by doing this - just run the die set through your die cutting machine only a few times and you have a choice of snowflakes to assemble together. I picked two snowflakes to put together and assembled them with a little dimensional in between and then with a button on the center from the Teal Ice button collection. I wrapped some twine, added a line of liquid pearls and then stamped the little birdie and sentiment from the Cool Crowd stamp set for each tag. I LOVE the font on this sentiment - it feels so jolly :) And the little cutie bird is too sweet with his hat!!

The snowflake was adhered to vellum and then the whole tag was tied with some White Glimmer ribbon - here is another picture of all the tags - I LOVED making these tags - and can't wait to make more!! Can't believe the year is almost over and the holiday season is really upon us!!!

Hi, my name is Sankari and I am the lucky mom of 2 darlings. I love being with my family, laughing and learning. I am an Ayurvedic consultant, a professor and also love to stamp and scrapbook. I am so happy to be able to meet so many wonderful crafters in blogland - you are my inspiration! Drop a line and say hi :)